


KAMEN RIDER HURRICANE

by Classpectanon



Category: Homestuck, Kamen Rider - All Media Types
Genre: Action, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Illustrations, Kamen Rider - Freeform, Multimedia, Pictures, Super Sentai
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-07 08:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18616810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Classpectanon/pseuds/Classpectanon
Summary: He realized now, with this girl standing inches from his face, breathing heavily at him, how unreal the past 10 minutes had been. Was this some kind of dream? Did he take a spill and had passed out? Where was everyone else? Looking between the girl and the house in his hands filled him with a sense of intense surreality, as if his entire life was hinging on whether or not something to be seen would happen. Hinged on a coin flip."Sburb Driver - Connected! Are you ready?"Somehow, John has never felt more ready than this. His entire life, leading up to this moment."Henshin!"





	1. Henshin! Kamen Rider Hurricane!

April 13th, 2012 - an auspicious date for an auspicious boy.

Skaia City, the modern metropolis of shining skyscrapers and scientific wonders. Camera pan sideways, as we sweep across its distinctive skyline, the massive Quill standing in the city's center, the nerve line connecting Skaianet to the rest of their company-owned and operated urban latticework. Like cracks on glass, empirically determined streets crisscross and snake outwards from the city's center point in a way that seems baffling to anyone but an AI, resulting in the city's fabled nonexistent traffic. Every car gets everywhere on time, perfect as always. Major roads were perfect grids, minor ones, tiny cracks, divvying up the circle into an arrangement of squares, and further out, polygons with rounded edges.

John Egbert was one of the inhabitants of this city, out closer to the edge. But today, he was right in the perfect middle of things.

That is to say, he was taking a tour of the Quill.

Not many people got this opportunity, but John was one of the lucky ones! His entire classroom got to come along, too. Well, really, it was a trip for the classroom, not a trip for him, but either way, a field trip  _was_ a field trip. Astride, his best friend, the two of them lagging behind the group by a couple of paces, gaining distance with every slow step. 

"So, Egbert, level with me here. You're  _absolutely_ scoping out the ass on our tour guide, right?" Dave Strider said, apropos of nothing in particular. Dave had been John's best friend since middle school, a friendship that began with Dave dunking on his taste in Nintendo DS games and then proceeding to absolutely thrash a boss John was having trouble with, and ended here, with Dave talking about Mrs. Serket's ass. Dave was improbably cool. Almost too cool for school. Sunglasses at all time of day, a fucking bokken sticking out of his backpack, firmly resisting any efforts to be removed by authority figures, and sandals with socks at all times. So cool. 

"No!" John said, almost but not quite yelling, firmly ignoring Dave's stubborn attempts to elbow him in the side. John, of course, was lying, but he wasn't going say something like that out loud. John was the wise guy to Dave's straight man: cracking jokes, pulling stunts, and then doing well enough in school that teachers and his father didn't bother him. The interior of the Quill was bright white and elegant, like a Macbook, all rounded edges and lights. Little windows where they were given the opportunity to peak at one of the thousands of gears, the assembly lines, the things being assembled.

A door, off to the side. Mrs. Serket paid it no mind, but Dave's grin was generally pointed in the direction of whatever he was looking at, and John was always inclined to follow, as long as it wasn't at someone's choice ass. "Hey. John."

"Yeah?" John asked, already knowing what Dave was thinking when they slowed to a halt, letting their group of classmates begin to climb ahead of them, until they stopped for a moment while Mrs. Serket talked about manufacturing or some shit like that.

"You wanna do something stupid?" Dave asked back, hands in his pockets like he totally wasn't planning something nefarious. John rolled his eyes and started walking ahead of him without an answer.

"No, I'd really rather not get in, like, actual legal trouble, Dave. C'mon. Think about where we are." John started, although his footsteps halted when Dave clasped a hand over his shoulder.

"Dude, no, come on." Dave grinned, holding up an ID card labeled "Aranea Serket". "Let's do something stupid. I'll pull distraction?"

**SMASH CUT**

"Yes, Mr. Strider?"

"Ah, yeah, um," Dave said, making sure to circle around to the other side of the group so that everyone's attention was distinctly focused on him and not his shorter friend wandering over to the abandoned door. Unlike Dave, John didn't stand out. Round features from a Dad that baked too much, a naturally squat weightlifter's build with broad shoulders, and big, nerdy glasses. If John was Dave's height, he might've stood out in a crowd, demanded attention the way Dave could in an instant, but John was not. This, thankfully, made them the perfect team. "So, how do you feel about allegations that your company's terms of residence for this city include several worrying provisions that seem to indicate a predilection towards some kind of human experimentation? There's rumors going about that you're trying to, like, make some kind of weird gross super soldier project, like Captain America but shitty, so I guess like Captain Britain? Or maybe Judge Dredd. Is Skaianet secretly ran by Judge Death? I guess that's the real question I have here."

Predilection. That was a great word. Thanks, Rose, for writing the better and more legible half of the speech. He could always count on his cousin to surreptitiously help with some kind of mischief-making, and while he wasn't sure if he was going to get up to any today, Dave knew that there would be a good opportunity to take a shot against Skaianet's nose, even if it was coming from a pipsqueak little shit in a tour group. But getting able to take that shot and help John Egbert slip into somewhere he wasn't supposed to be?  _Perfect_.

John's hands rumbled with the pickpocketed ID card, not having bothered to ask how exactly Dave acquired it. When pressed, the answer was, of course, "Shenanigans", as it tended to be. A swipe, the first of which gave an angry red light and a small chime, but the second, steadier now, delivered the vaunted green glow of acceptance. It slid open, and John was delivered into a maze of hallways with no rhyme or reason, all in perfect, 90-degree curves. Doors with no windows, just more ID card swipers. Each one he tried in a row just added to the streak of declines, and none of the doors were labeled. The only noise he could hear was the gentle grinding of gears.

At the end of the fourth turn, John finally found a room that worked. He felt like he was being watched, but it was too late to back down now. After all, if security hadn't stopped him at this point, then that meant they probably weren't going to get to him in any reasonable time. Leave it to the entire city's controlling corporation to have shitty security. He entered, the door hissed shut, and he heard the engagement of a lock.

It was dark inside, the only thing visible being a bright, lime green symbol on the opposite wall. Four squares, one with a smaller square cut out of it, gently rotating, and a large, house-roof-shaped triangle. There was a loud hiss, and the lights snapped on. Between him and the "house" was a yawning void of a white room, a void that felt insurmountable despite the solid ground between them. To his left, some kind of massive control panel looking into a glass room, and to his right, drawers and computers, beeping and pinging. The house itself was suspended on a small black mount on the wall like it was a prized possession, wires and... Veins? Sticking out of it.

The air was loose and quiet. John looked towards the glass room, noting with perhaps less urgency than he should a girl strapped to some kind of medical table, in a hospital gown, or something that passed for it. Long, shaggy black hair that fanned around her like a halo. Large rimmed glasses, just like John's.

He felt the room calling to him.

He felt that somehow, none of this was a coincidence. That he was exactly where he needed to be right now. A little voice in his head urged him on, and he took a step into the white room, feeling some kind of innocuous, unnatural bravery fill his lungs like oxygen. The world seemed to fall away, leaving it with just him and the house. He didn't even realize that he had grabbed it until it had been detached from the wall, holding it in his hands, staring at it, back to front, looking for seams. When he couldn't find any, he turned around, only to come face to face with a girl he had previously assumed was asleep, and shattered glass. How come he hadn't heard her moving? Or the glass breaking?

He realized now, with this girl standing inches from his face, breathing heavily at him, how unreal the past 10 minutes had been. Was this some kind of dream? Did he take a spill and had passed out? Where was everyone else? Looking between the girl and the house in his hands filled him with a sense of intense surreality, as if his entire life was hinging on whether or not something to be seen would happen. Hinged on a coin flip.

John struggled against the wall, held up by the girl's single arm, raised, outstretched. Blue veins pulsed against her skin while she bared her teeth like a dog ready to rip and tear at the intruder. He grabbed a hold of her wrist with one hand, trying to pry it away, as his breath was stolen from him. Her gaze: glassy, blue eyes striped with striations of bloodshot capillaries. "Get... off of me!" John hissed, the hand gripping the house-shaped object flailing against her to try and beat her away.

But it wasn't working. His vision faded at the edges, going sparkly and fuzzy, television static overtaking him. The last thing he saw was the girl's snarling face.

 

 

 

 _John Egbert_  
"Me?"  
_Yes, you._  
"Um, yeah, that's me, I guess!"  
_You are dying._  
"Is that what this is? I really couldn't tell."  
_Your sarcasm is noted, and unappreciated._  
"Alright, cool, just making sure we're on the same page here."  
_I can stop her._  
"And who are you? God? Because, no offense, I expected God to have a much deeper voice."  
J _ohn Egbert, are you really fighting with me while you're being strangled to death? I have your best interests in mind._  
_You can call me Muse Calliope. I am an AI inside the house you now hold._  
"Don't be silly. True strong AI aren't real, you're just a hallucination of my oxygen deprived brain."  
_John Egbert. Really? I am here to strike a bargain and keep you alive and still, you persist._  
_What do you have to lose?_  
"...Fine. What's the bargain?"  
_Wear me._  
"Uh..."  
_I will channel Creata, the creative energy residing within each soul, through your fragile form, thus allowing you to continue living._  
"You have  _got_ to be shitting me."  
_I can assure you, I am not_ _._  
"Okay, let's workshop this. Assuming that I'm not a hallucination, that you are a magic AI, that there is creative energy in my soul, and that you can help me not die, what's my end of the bargain?"  
_By performing this, I am merely pushing back the inevitable._  
_ When you wear the Sburb Driver, you are embracing subsumption for the greater good._  
_ If you do this, you will die in exactly one year._  
_ If you do not, you will die today._  
_ But I will not violate your autonomy. Should you wish to die today, I am perfectly willing to grant you that desire._  
"You've really kind of gotten me in a bind here, you know that?"  
_Only on the border between the conscious and the unconscious can I make myself known._  
_ Will you choose to be a hero? Or will you choose to submit to death?_  
"Oh, you should've just framed it that way earlier. This is when I get superpowers?"  
_In a way, yes._  
"To defend the weak and helpless?"  
_That is, hopefully, the end result. Do you accept?_  
"Well, duh. Of course I accept."  
"If you mentioned this was a superhero thing I would've said yes earlier, by the way."  
_...Curiouser and curiouser._  
_Very well, John Egbert._  
_Grasp the Driver._  
_Call my incantation._  
_Henshin!_

 

John felt awfully silly, return of his consciousness notwithstanding, ready to shout out some weird magic word because an AI in his head told him to. And frankly, he wasn't sure if he had hallucinated the entire experience or not - but the house had become firmly affixed to his pants, forming a black belt around his waist, snugly keeping his clothes up. A burst of energy filled his grip, and he wrenched the girl's arm away from his neck, feeling her long nails rake against her skin before he managed to slam her into the ground. If he could see his eyes right now, he would be able to see the trails of light blue coming off of his irises like smoke. With the girl successfully no longer choking him, he took in a huge lungful of air, grateful for the clarity it gave him.

From here, it was easy to see that the house had transformed slightly in the process of becoming a belt. Now, two rectangular slots were open in the "roof", each one about the right size to fit half a deck of cards. One of them was already filled with some notched rectangle, dark black in coloration, and the other was empty. John already knew what to do, as if the knowledge had been injected into his head. He grabbed the side of the house, ratcheting it along as it rotated 360 degrees, a soft light emerging from both slots. The smallest square hissed, twisting sideways and turning bright white when it clicked into place. Tapping the top of the slots, he heard the kind of click that you normally heard only when you put a Nintendo 64 cart in just right.

"Sburb Driver - Connected! Are you ready?"

Somehow, John has never felt more ready than this. His entire life, leading up to this moment.

"Henshin!"

The light was overwhelming, our camera zooming across the room as if blown away. A bright green spirograph starts at John's feet, revolving and twisting and churning like a tornado, climbing up his body while our view pans up, watching spandex materialize into being. As it reaches his head, it stops, only to be replaced with a series of smaller spirographs coiling around his body. New weight added with armor padding, his vision going blue for a bare moment as a helmet manifests on his face, bright cyan circles giving him plenty to see out of. If this was a true TV show, we'd hear the fanfare, as a blue scarf emerges from the aether, coiling around his neck, adding another splash of color to his otherwise monochrome armor. The sides of his forearms had slender, blade-like fins jutting out from the side just a bit, and as the armor clamped and clicked into place, there was a loud  _hiss_ of rushing air. "Heir! Heir! Heir! Masked Rider!" The rest of the name came to him like a vision from a dream.

"Masked Rider Hurricane!"

* * *

At the top of the Quill, a figure looms over his desk. White tuxedo with green beneath, as usual. He liked to feel fancy. His secretaries tend to his affairs so he can watch the cameras. "Masked Rider Hurricane, hmm?" He steeples his fingers. Pressing the button on the intercom, he leaned in to speak, his porcelain skin illuminated by the sun's setting light. "Miss Peixes? Miss Megido? I believe Vriska has earned the right to transform. If Calliope isn't feeling cooperative, force the issue. We won't get proper data if he's beating on a poor, defenseless, crippled young lady."

This was going to be an interesting day. Momentous, even. He couldn't wait to see what would happen.

* * *

 

John backed away from the girl as she launched herself at him with a snarl, her single fist colliding with his rounded chestplate and causing him to stumble backward an inch or so into the wall, bouncing his helmet into it. While John knew it was against the rules to punch girls, this was an exception.

Forgive him, Dad, for he was about to sin.

His fist sent her flying through the mechanical door that had locked them in, causing it to buckle and snap. John looked away, covering his visor with his hands while the girl's hospital gown flew up, missing the sight of a plus-shaped device, grey in coloration, attached to a belt beneath. He was listening, though, walking forward, noticing how the whole ensemble added about a foot of height to him through means he couldn't tell. "Insert Disk One - Scorpio!" He heard Calliope say in the distance, her voice distorted into an electronic growl. His hearing was razor sharp now, enough to tell that the barefoot girl had gotten up and started walking - so he was free to take his palms off his helmet.

She was limp. Languid. Blue blood trickled out from between her lips, a droplet or two rolling down from her nose. Her hand palmed at her waist, grabbing hold of something beneath her gown, and he heard a noise that had already turned familiar and terrifying. Cliiiiick clikclikclikclikclik clikclikclikclikclikclik. A preparatory chime. "Sgrub Driver - Connected! Prepare yourself!"

Finally, he got to hear her voice for the first time. Just as much of a distorted growl as Calliope's, but this time, distorted only by her vocal cords. At the end of her phrase, it pitched upwards into an ear-splitting shriek.

" _HENSHIN!_ "

**SMASH CUT**

What was nominally a perfectly reasonable discussion on the nature of ethics in terms-of-use was actually a distraction that Dave Strider, unsurprisingly, had managed to distract himself by, to the moaning and grumbling of the other students. Twelve minutes had passed since John had disappeared down that mysterious door, and then, something else emerged from roughly the same side of the wall. The rumble was heard before the actual visage of the fight in question tousled itself over into the Quill's public hallway. Dave's hand pre-emptively reached backward in order to grab his bokken out of his backpack. "Mrs. Serket, while I'm absolutely  _enthralled_ by this conversation, I think we should get away from that wall now. Just consider it the latest in a long series of hunches related tangentially to this conversat-"

The wall gave way to a masked figure in spandex and armor, his blue scarf trailing behind him, flying through the air at enough force to leave a humanoid indent in the other wall. The crowd split and screamed. A couple of them started running wherever they could, while Mrs. Serket tried her best to wrangle the situation: "I think now would be a great time for us all to leave in an orderly fashion!" She tried to yell over the din, ignored by the parade of freaking-out sixteen and fifteen-year-olds. Fuck it. She ran. Another figure stepped out from the busted wall, and Mrs. Serket knew exactly who it was. She really, really wished it wasn't her turn to tour guide. Poor Vriska.

The monster on the other side was only vaguely recognizable as a human. Twisted, chitinous plating taking the loose form of a pirate's garb, with broad, almost ship-shaped shoulderpads, one of which lacked anything at all underneath it. Black and cerulean and rotten wood browns, intricate curling patterns. A gladiator skirt made of harpoon heads, jingling against each other like windchimes. The figure was only vaguely feminine, a mane of long hair made from brackish ink flowing from her scalp. Her singular arm was tipped with a savage looking spear, while an array of hand-like objects were scattered about her coat. She pressed the tip of the spear into one of them, a blue flash filling the room as it clicked into place, giving her a hand to use. She flexed it a couple of times, as if to make sure it was real, and got two steps forward before she was interrupted.

"Oi, oi oi oi oi oi!"

When John reeled out of his daze and realized who was talking, his heart dropped.

Dave Strider's smug grin filled the universe. His bokken slapped against the ground like a couple of rickety gunshots, more than getting everyone's attention.

"You've got guts showing your face during my class's field trip, Blackbeard! But one thing you forgot to take into account was me!" He shouted, loud enough that everyone had stopped screaming and had mostly turned to stare at him in horror. "The reputation of our classroom echoes far and wide through our school! When people talk about its  _badass_ leader, a man of indomitable spirit and masculinity, they're talking about me! Dave Strider!"

John's legs tensed up once the bottoms of his feet touched the ground. As Dave spoke, his knees bent. "All of you, get the hell out of here! This is between me and the one-armed bandit!" He shouted, and the creature that used to be a girl in a hospital gown seemed absolutely stunned enough to not even care when everyone fled back the way the tour group originally came. Now, it was just the three of them.

Dave pointed his wooden sword up to the chin of the monster. "Just who the hell do you-", but John didn't give him the opportunity to finish his lame anime speech. Before Dave got the life throttled out of him, John jumped, kicking himself off the floor with a hiss of steam, shooting out faster than he had ever run even during mile day at Gym class, faster than his fastest 100m sprint (which wasn't saying much). The slightly curved hallway dropped away from them as John leaped to the wall and kicked back off, putting Dave on the floor. When John looked back and saw the monster recovering from its punch, he knew he made the right choice.

"Get out of here. Now!" John yelled, thankful that this helmet had mysterious voice changing properties that he almost immediately went and ruined.

"No! I can h-"

"Now, Dave!" John yelled, and Dave had a sudden moment of recognition. His face hardened, and he nodded, but not before pressing his wooden sword into John's hand.

"You better not fuck this up, Egbert," Dave said, and John started immediately mentally kicking himself. Still, a weapon was a weapon. He grabbed it and whipped around, his scarf fluttering behind him, a flash of blue in the perfectly white halls.

"C'mon, Dave. When have I ever messed up a prank?"


	2. Vriska Serket and the Mysterious Doctor Scratch!

"C'mon, sis, stop being such a tightass!"

Vriska's begging was becoming insistent. Now that her sixteenth birthday had passed, the idea had been distinctly caught in her head that she was owed a trip to Aranea's workplace.

Vriska Serket lived modestly, in a way that stood out even amongst the inhabitants of Skaia City, with its record 0% homelessness rate (a fact that drew much attention to the test-run city-of-tomorrow). She slept on a couch, she went to school the bare minimum amount required, even scheduling out her days home, and played video games, languishing in sin in only the way a teenager with no friends could. Her sister, Aranea, took care of her in the absence of her mother and father, two adults she never knew the comfort of.

In her dreams, sometimes, she thinks about her mother, wondering what kind of person she was. Was she an epic criminal who robbed banks and was taken in by the government? A dissident fighting against the vaguely sinister Skaianet, only to be taken in by their corporate police? A powerful CEO, hidden from the public eye, and thus, her children? These dreams occurred to her nightly, but she never knew what to make of them. Whenever she awoke, she stopped thinking about her - but in the world of dreams, she brewed rich, lavish tales of her mother, a woman she never knew even in silhouette.

Maybe she just left. Maybe she was just a normal woman who left.

That thought occurred to her exactly once, on the cusp of awakening, and then she banished it forever.

Even the magnanimity of Skaianet didn't prevent the medical expenses from piling up with only one adult (barely) in the house. You see, several years ago, Vriska was in an "accident". Now she has only one arm. Despite that, she's gotten used to it, and can still probably beat you at any video game, even if the joystick of her controller is a little bitten down. She doesn't like talking about it in more detail than that, but suffice to say, Vriska definitely felt like she was owed something from Skaianet. Something in return for the misery they caused her.

"No," Aranea replied, sifting through emails, mostly about bills, on her small tablet computer, the sort of thing that was only recently coming into vogue in the rest of the world but was already a big deal in Skaia City. Your personal tablet controlled everything, contained all your information, and was encoded to your fingerprint and biosignature. If it was lost, it would be returned to you. Aranea's tablet was in her favorite shade of blue, and was absolutely full of bills, bills, and more bills. Even the relatively high-paying job at Skaianet wasn't enough for everything they needed to live a perfectly content life.

The camera pans around the Serket apartment, neatly divided in half by a small line of white tape. Beyond one side of the line, the kitchen and bedroom lay in immaculate, spotless tidiness, cleaned every single day of Aranea's life. All of the utensils and gadgets (oh how she loved kitchen gadgets) were in place, the pots and pans in their cupboards, the food in the fridge organized like someone playing a 3d game of Tetris, packed in tight. On the other side, where the living room was, it was veritable squalor. Dice and wires strewn about, blankets and pillows, empty bags of vending machine food. The latest game console hooked up to the television, the television hooked up to the wall, the console hooked up to a controller, the controller hooked up to Vriska. The couch was covered in a small, spiderweb-themed blanket, (Vriska's purchase, not Aranea's), and underneath that blanket, the younger of the Serkets.

"Look, Vriska, I don't have  _time_ to start an argument with you about this today. I have to get to work, and you are  _supposed_ to have school. I'm going to get going now, and I hope you do the same soon." Aranea lectured, looping her handbag over her shoulder. She always felt so sorry when she looked at her sister waste away uselessly on the couch. Three years ago, Vriska cared about her appearance, cared about school, and even wore dresses as Aranea did, but now it was all pajamas and sweats and t-shirts. If she was a more attentive sister, she might've caught the telltale signs of depression, and intervened before it led Vriska down the path she was going to go down later today.

Unfortunately for Aranea, she was not a very good sister. When Vriska flippantly responded with "Why? It's not like anyone misses me,", she felt her heart ache in two. Aranea paused by the front door as it hissed and slid open, sliding her tablet into her handbag. She stared out into the hallway. The camera closes in on her face as she sighs, her shoulders slumping.

"Fine. Get dressed in something respectable and I'll take you."

* * *

"-And this is the elevator to my boss, Dr. Scratch's office," Aranea explained, gesticulating towards the ornate, marble-encrusted elevator door. Even though pretty much everything in the Quill was a shade of white or lime green, this little extra bit of decoration seemed to make it whiter and lime greener than most. It took a little bit of finagling, but eventually, Aranea managed to convince her upper manager, the one between her and Dr. Scratch, to let her use a vacation day to show Vriska around the office.

Her younger sister proved to be disarmingly interested in even the most boring minutiae. She had gotten herself dressed in a button-down and slacks, which was the most Aranea could coax her into, and probably the closest thing to business formal Vriska would ever wear in her life. One sleeve tied off, and all Vriska had earned for her act of bravery in clotheswearing were stares in equal parts pity and confusion. Vriska wondered what, exactly, if anything, people were pitying her for, but it seemed most of the confusion was from the office workers, and most of the pity was from the managers. Vriska asked questions, remained engaged when given explanations, and was almost acting like a completely different person - like she wasn't, in so many words, a couch-surfing waste of space.

"I don't talk to him very often, though. He rarely leaves his office. I'm not sure if he goes home, to be perfectly honest!" Aranea joked, cracking the smallest smile she could. Her stares were neither pitying nor confused. More than anything, she was glad that Vriska was having just as much fun as she thought she was going to.

And then, before they had a chance to leave, Dr. Scratch's personal elevator dinged open.

Despite being about a full head shorter than Aranea and about an inch shorter than Vriska, the man who stepped out of the ornate, silver-plated elevator was anything but tiny in aura. When the elevator shut behind him, his presence sparked out like ball lightning, quickly growing to fill the room. Everyone seemed to shrink away from him in much the way that you would shrink away from a nuclear reactor on the edge of going supercritical with just the tiniest misplacement of fuel rods. His manner of dress was, obviously, both impeccable and, you guessed it, lime green and white. The camera cuts around him, showing off every angle of his smug, closed-lipped smile, a perfectly shaven face of nearly paper-white skin, pepper-and-salt hair combed backward in a polite, efficient arrangement. He adjusted his bow tie, and then extended a hand out towards Vriska.

She clasped her hand into his, and he gave her a firm shake. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Vriska. Word of your arrival has traveled upwards through the grapevine, and I figured that, with so few visitors, it would be rude of me to not make a personal appearance. Welcome to Skaianet."

* * *

Dr. Scratch's office was furnished spartanly - a desk and an office chair and his tablet set into a stand, the windows allowing the sun to peek through, giving him a perfect view of the entire city. His office took up an entire floor to its own, with no elevators reaching the spaces above, only stairs to the roof (not that anyone wanted to be on the roof in a building this tall). It was, for all intents and purposes, the very tip of the Quill, and Vriska's fateful introduction has led both her and Aranea to here. Vriska never dreamed she would be anywhere close to anyone important, and Aranea never dreamed she would ever be in Dr. Scratch's office. He even got out two plush, expensive-feeling chairs for them to sit in.

"Do you have a drug of choice, Vriska? I'm personally unsure as to what it is the teenagers are doing in this day and age, but if it's anything like that of my childhood peers, I'd be able to requisition it for you in a moment's notice. Does anyone mind if I smoke?" Dr. Scratch asked, pulling out a chalk-white, labelless cigarette pack, and a shiny, golden lighter, hefty enough to knock someone out, engraved with a grinning, spike-toothed skull.

"I'll take a cigarette," Vriska replied, leaning forward with grim excitement while Aranea admonished her.

"I didn't know you smoked! That's very, very unhealthy!" Aranea scolded, trying her best scowl out on her bespectacled sibling.

"You never asked." Vriska replied, accepting the white cigarette. She kept it held out, and Dr. Scratch immediately picked up on what she was silently requesting, using his lighter, its dull, green flame, to begin burning her end of the bargain. When Vriska took a slow, deep inhale, Aranea sighed.

"I'll take one too." Aranea said. Dr. Scratch's smile turned into a slight grin before returning to something more closed-mouth.

"I don't recall offering one to you, Miss Serket." He responded, before offering her one anyway. "As punishment, I'll have to request you use your own lighter."

"Fine by me." Aranea drawled, taking what was offered and rummaging around in her handbag for a lighter, finding one, and lighting up. At some point between the two sisters, Dr. Scratch had begun smoking one as well, exhaling grey smoke into the air, letting it get sucked away by the ventilation. He stared upwards at the blank, white ceiling as if it were the sky itself. He returned both the cigarettes and the lighter to his pocket, and then leaned forward, steepling his fingers in a way that framed his face with them, the sunlight glinting off his eyes.

"Tell me, Vriska - do you have dreams?"

Vriska looked at Dr. Scratch like he had two heads, and then humored his question, throwing her one arm up a little dramatically in the process, as if to emphasize her response. "Of course I have dreams. I dream all the time, dude." Aranea looked like she could stare a hole in Vriska's head, but then her sister corrected herself. "I mean, Dr. Scratch."

"Of course you do. I meant a little more substantially than that, though. Do you have things you'd like to do with your life? Hopes? Aspirations?" Dr. Scratch elaborated, smoke running out of his mouth like water with the gravity turned off, slipping between the tiniest cracks in his smile.

Vriska shrugged. "I mean, I used to. And then, uh, this happened." She answered, gesturing to her empty sleeve. "Why do you ask?"

Aranea leaned forward silently, concern knit into her brow.

"What if I told you I could give you your arm back?" Dr. Scratch asked, reaching into his desk to pull out a stack of papers. For some reason, Vriska's eyes were drawn to his belt buckle, a perfect white circle, like a cueball, with a small rectangular hole at the top. Big enough for, like, a USB drive, probably.

"I'd call you a liar, Doc." Vriska shot back, seeming a little bit offended at the very concept. And yet... "But I'd be curious."

"Well, it  _is_ within our capabilities, although the biotechnology is a little untested. But we'd pay for it free of charge, and waive your school attendance for the duration of the trial. While I'm sure this is more of interest to your sister, we incur any financial loss that would happen should the trial go wrong. We will pay for your expenses either way." Dr. Scratch summated, and the offer seemed more tempting than ever. Vriska leaned forward to stare at the stack of papers.

"And what do I have to do in return? This seems way, way, way too good to be true." Vriska snipped, leaning into her chair while Aranea got a closer look at the documents.

"Your participation in our trial is all that we request. Your end of the bargain is contributing to the advancement of science, and the human condition as a whole. All we'd need from you is your signature in a couple of places, and that of your legal guardian in a couple more."

Aranea furrowed her brow, staring at the papers. If she stared some more, maybe they would make sense.

"...Fine. If Aranea'll sign for it, I'm game."

Dr. Scratch pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and gave a full, toothsome grin.

"Excellent. We'll begin right after lunch, if that's okay with you?"

* * *

John bounced backwards on his heels, bringing Dave's fake wooden sword to bear with each long, vicious swipe from the monster in front of him. Where she stepped, she left a trail of ink, her claw-tipped single hand cutting into the air like it was trying to pry it apart. She caught the back edge of the sword with her fingers, and with that mere moment of grip, she propelled herself forward, slamming her forehead into John's, sending him reeling.

"I don't want to hurt you! I know my movie cliches, and the fact that you're so incoherent means you're probably-" John tried to say, trying to contact some kind of inner empathy within the piratical profligate currently attempting to rip his face off. His interruption was a fist to the chest, sending him and his SFX wires back several dozen feet with an exaggerated grunt. 

 _John. You have to fight back. You won't be able to save her without fighting her first._  
No! I can do this!

John chafed at the voice inside of his head, now that he could hear her(?) more clearly. The monster deposited its hand back on its coat (prompting John to think of the phrase 'coat of arms' and chuckle silently to himself) before attaching a new end to the hook-stump, something like a metal whip, tipped with a blunt metal sphere, a single curved spike on the side. It looked like a fucked up, shitty scythe, with the chain all stiffened up.

I'm a hero! Heroes don't hurt innocents!  
_John. You're going to have to, in order to drain her of her Creata._  
_The reservoir is filled with physical stamina. When she's out of energy, she will revert back._  
Then can't I just outlast her?

John's boots left a small crater in the ground as the hammer end of the whip-polearm smacked into his sword, pressing him down for several seconds while his body strained with the effort, a blue light surrounding the sword, preventing it from snapping.

 _Theoretically, yes._  
_But on the defensive, she will cause you to revert back before you have the opportunity to outlast her._  
_Then, she will surely kill you._  
Nnhh...

Again came the vicious vertical strike, but this time, the impact caused the pole to separate into chain-like segments, knocking John on his ass. Serpentine, it whipped around, the monster's arm only vaguely guiding the head of the meteor hammer as it screamed through the air like a bad CGI effect. Splinters and cracks appeared in the sword, but somehow, it persisted.

_ To win, you must fight! _

"Fine!" John roared, out loud this time instead of with the voice in his head, cutting the sword out across the air. The force of his motion sent a rocketing wave of wind towards the monster, ripping the whip-flail out of her hand and causing her to stumble several steps backward. John, admittedly, had no idea how to use a sword, nor did he have any idea how to summon wind, but apparently, the hissing of steam from his armor and the light blue glow coming off of his impromptu weapon seemed to be doing most of the magic for him. The trailing tendrils of his windburst ripped tiles loose from the wall, scattering them about like playing cards.

"I don't know what your name is-" John spoke to the empty, unfeeling air, cutting his sword back across, the second blow striking the monster right across the chest. Sparks flew from her armor, a boat-shaped shoulderpad shunted off by the force of his strike. He bent down, hearing the hiss of his armor, feeling the power coiling up in his legs. "But I know mind control when I see it!"

The wooden sword turned into a bright blue spear of light, held in one of John's hands. He looked at it, eyebrow raised under his helmet, and tightened his grip. He needed more than a wooden sword. He'd need a weapon that would end this in a single hit. Green lightning, bright, eye-searing green, arced off of the blue spear, dissolving away the light, flaking away wood and grain until it became a handle, smooth, leathery grip. The wave of lighting traveled up to the tip of the sword, forming into a ball, dissolving the very air in front of him like it was cracking glass to reveal the hidden hammerhead underneath. The sledgehammer was heavy, tip dropping like a stone, landing in the ground with a heavy thump. It was far more ornate than any hammer had any right to be, all black, white, grey and silver, lined with filigree.

The monster let out a roar and charged. No more extra weapons, just an outstretched fishing spear, aimed for John's neck.

"And I _will_ save you!"

The impact of the sledgehammer's head against the monster's stomach was loud enough to immediately blow out the closest glass objects, and rattle furniture for miles around. It was like a thunderclap times ten, forcing curling waves of cerulean out from the girl as her monstrous form shattered around her, breaking into pieces of a visage far more horrifying than her limp frame once she impacted the wall. The hammer fell away, too, revealing the sword beneath, and John nervously ran forward to check her pulse, picking her up from the ground.

Already, through his helmet, he could hear the sirens of Skaianet's police force.

Time to skedaddle.

* * *

John slipped in through the window of his suburban house, out closer to the edge of Skaia City, the girl still in tow, still in her hospital gown. Making it up to the window wasn't difficult in this state, but what was more surprising was seeing Dave there, sitting on his computer chair. John wordlessly set the girl down on the bed, and with a thought, felt the armor fall apart around him, dissolving into green. He sighed, walked up to his bedroom door, and thumped his head against the wall, passing the bokken back to Dave.

"How'd you get here?" John asked.

"I walked, obviously." Dave replied with a raised eyebrow, just barely visible, peeking over the edge of his sunglasses.

"I mean in my bedroom, Dave." John sighed in retort.

"Oh, I asked your dad. I told him that we were doing a group project and I sent you to get the nosh, so obviously he just bought that at face value like a stupid fucking TV show dad and let me in no problem whatsoever. And yet, here you are, thoroughly noshless - unless you intend for us to dip into cannibalism but, like, that's really not my thing." Dave rambled back, in typical Dave Strider fashion, while John threw his bookbag onto the floor, sitting down right next to it, the girl sleeping silently and soundly. "Who's the babe?"

"Not sure. But I beat her out of the monster, so I'm, like, ninety-nine percent certain that she was turned into it through some kind of mind control? She was acting super feral when I found her." John explained, trying to make it sound like anything but 'I kidnapped a test subject who is probably the property of the gigantic megacorporation that literally owns the entire city'.

"Choice. So, like Power Rangers? Because her getup looked super costume-y, just with some fucking killer Hollywood-tier SFX, if you know what I'm saying? Yours too, for the record."

"Yeah, I think so. I mean, like Power Rangers. Not to any of the other stuff you said."

Dave folded his hands into his lap politely, leaning further back in John's chair until it risked falling over entirely. "Wanna give me the scoop? Am I your Billy Cranston now? Sitting in the Command Center with Zordon and Alpha Twenty-Five while you go out and do the cool hero shit?"

"Dave, you and I both know you aren't smart enough to be Billy Cranston."

"Hahaha, absolutely fair."

**Author's Note:**

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